You’ve heard it before: Weight Loss is Not Linear.

But what does that mean exactly, and what can you expect while on your weight loss journey?

The phrase, ‘weight loss is not linear’ means that you are not going to lose the same amount of weight every week, week after week, forever.

Typically, the first few weeks on a new nutrition and/or fitness routine will create the most extreme weight loss results.

Why? Because the body is doing a new thing and your metabolism is ‘surprised’. Your body reacts quickly to the sudden drop in calories in or increase in calories out. So, you will see the biggest weight loss result at the beginning.

If you’ve got a lot of weight to lose and have made a very significant change in a short period of time, you may actually see as much as 10-15lbs of weight loss in just the first couple of weeks. This is great, but it’s not sustainable. You cannot and should not continue to lose at this high rate.

Under normal circumstances, after a few weeks at this ‘new normal’, the body (your metabolism) adapts to the reduction in calories. In an effort to keep you alive, your metabolism begins to slow down to accommodate for the new routine. As the metabolism begins to adjust, your weight loss will likely slow down to a 0.5-1lb weight loss per week.

So long as you can maintain this 0.5-1lb weight loss each week you will see downward (linear) progress. But likely, after about 8-12 weeks, despite eating right and exercising consistently, the weight on the scale will eventually stop. This is totally normal and simply means your metabolism has officially adjusted and it’s time to make a change.

Generally speaking, at this point I prescribe a reverse diet. This means I have my client slowly begin to eat more food (usually starting with 50 calories a day) in order to reset their metabolism without piling on a ton of weight. The journey, however, is not yet done. There’s still more weight to be lost and there are actually two more cycles to go through before we begin cutting their calories again. 

But those are details for another day.

Weight loss is not linear, but there are quite a few indicators you can see and celebrate along the way, regardless of what’s happening on the scale. These are called Non-Scale Victories. My favorite NSV’s to track with my clients include:

• Increased confidence
• Increased knowledge about nutrition and exercise
• My client doesn’t feel like she’s dieting
• My client can successfully eat out on the weekend
• Reduced exercise workload
• My client feels like she can sustain the nutrition and exercise protocol forever

Focusing on the Non-Scale Victories can keep you motivated to continue. It’s 100% normal to see fluctuations on the scale during the course of your weight loss journey. The most important thing is to maintain a healthy metabolism while losing weight. This is what we aim to do with each and every one of our G-Transformation Academy clients.